Zoom: Tell me about yourself, your roots and when you began to take photographs.


Marcella Müller: I'm currently based in Stuttgart, Germany and have been here since completing my studies in 1992. During the early 80's I started to take an interest in Photography and began to shoot a variety of subjects on 35mm black & white but for some reason I was never interested in portraiture. In that time I saw an exhibition of Robert Häussers' work which had a profound effect on my ideas of photography, I had never seen landscape captured and presented in this way before ­ he is still one of my favourite photographers. In 1989 I started the first year of a photographic apprenticeship and soon realised that I wanted to go beyond the technical and commercial aspects of photography. I looked for courses outside Germany as it seemed they offered a broader view of photography at this time. I eventually decided on Derby University in England which offered both practical and theoretical approaches to the subject. During my time there I was introduced to the work of many photographers like Raymond Moore, Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz, Craigie Horsefield. I also began to change the way I worked and started using medium format colour and produced a series of triptychs for my final piece. After returning to Stuttgart I got the chance to buy a large format camera (13 x 18cm) and have worked with this ever since.


Landscape is a photographer's way of seeing. Not at all something extraneous and removed from the sense of self, landscape is the reconstruction of fragments of reality into a narration. Do you agree with this statement?


Landscape can be interpreted in many ways and the individual photographer must deal with it in their own way. For me, my landscape images go beyond documentation. I try to capture the essence of the place rather than the place itself. The difficult part is actually finding my subject. Sometimes I travel for days and never find a space which interests me either visually or emotionally. Many people ask me what I'm looking for in landscape but I can only explain through the images I have already produced.


Italian landscape photography seems afflicted with a "loss syndrome" as Ennery Taramelli [Professor of Art History at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples-ed.] has said. As the Italian landscape disappears, photography rushes in to "plug up" this loss of memory, often in a clumsy, superficial way. Your landscapes, on the other hand, are memory-filled narratives--what is the source of your ability to create such photos?


I do not intentially highlight certain aspects of landscape, much of my photography is concerned with spaces which have been inhabited. It doesen't matter in which country I take my photographs ­ the images are not necessarily a description of that country. The pictures are found, they do not follow a strict artistic concept or pattern. No matter where the photographs have been taken they can and should be viewed as a continuous theme which works on a metaphorical level.


I guess my work is influenced by German photography, there is a formality to my images but I feel that it has an emotional content which is sometimes not evident in the more rigorous approach of some German photographers.


In what way does the lack of human figures in your photographs become a glorification of the human figure rather than documentation of its absence, almost as if the places you photograph were just waiting for someone to appear?


I intentionally exclude the human figure from my photographs. Their presence is already evident and through absence I feel it allows the viewer to experience the space in a particular way and opens up the possibility for personal reference and reflection.


by Daniela Valle Vallomini